[Last Friday, April 19th, Prof. Marco Nardone held a lesson at the National School of Social Doctrine of the Church organized by our Observatory and by The Daily Compass. The School is dedicated to the social project of Leo XIII and Prof. Nardone’s lesson concerned the encyclical Diuturnum illud of 1881. After presenting the contents of the encyclical, the Speaker conducted some of his final reflections which due to their importance we publish here. Leo XIII found himself in a social and political reality adverse to Christianity, like the first Christians and, with due differences, like the Church today. He indicated a method of work and presence which, inspired by that of the first Christians, is still valid today. It would be sensible to reappropriate it conveniently. – Stefano Fontana]
Cited in Gaudium et spes (n. 36) and taken up by the Catechism of the Catholic Church (nn. 1898-1903), the Diuturnum illud remains, even today, a cornerstone of the Church’s doctrine on the divine origin of authority. After the Second Vatican Council, however, the Magisterium left in the background the reason for the State’s duties towards true religion, preferring instead to insist on religious freedom and collaboration between the two powers. It reiterated, it is true, especially with Benedict XVI, the need to link human authority to divine authority: in fact, the moral order, from which civil authority draws its legitimacy and the very virtue of obliging, is not holds that in God. For Leo XIII, however, moral order, God and religion are closely connected, so much so that he wanted to clarify this very point in the encyclical Au milieu des sollicitudes (1892). The encyclical, in the doctrinal part, is dedicated to the legitimacy of civil authority, and can be considered a completion of the Diuturnum Illud.
“Only religion – says the Pope – can create the social bond”. The aim of civil society, in fact, is the “moral improvement” of its members. But “morality, (…) since it participates in every human act, necessarily postulates God and, with God, religion, this sacred bond that has the privilege of uniting with God, before giving life to any other bond (…). Therefore, since religion is the internal and external expression of this dependence that we owe to God by way of justice, a peremptory commitment derives from this.” The expulsion of God from society, continues the Pope, ends up “annihilating (…) the very sense of morality in the depths of conscience”. For this reason, religion has always and everywhere been considered the foundation of morality, both personal and social. This is even more true for “the Catholic Religion (…), for the very fact that it is the true Church of Jesus Christ (…). Therefore, if this foundation disappears”, the people cannot be saved “from moral decadence and, perhaps, from dissolution”.
We must take note, after one hundred and thirty years, of the prophetic value of these words. However, we cannot avoid asking ourselves why the Magisterium, after the Council, has nuanced the classical teaching of the Church on the link between the common good, social morality and the public role of religio vera. And this, just as the moral decadence of society was worsening with secularization. Certainly, to be universally recognized, that bond presupposes the presence of a Christian society, which today is only a memory. However, even at the end of the 19th century it had been over for centuries the “time in which the philosophy of the Gospel governed society” (Immortale Dei); yet Leo XIII did not give up indicating that model as the perfecting ideal of society and of civil authority itself.
The issue has been the subject of a broad debate for years which we cannot even mention here. However, we can propose a reflection on what Leo XIII says about the “pastoral choice” made by the Church during the pagan empire.
During the pagan empire, claims the Pope in Diuturnum Illud, the Church, so to speak, took the lead: it treated political power not according to the representation it gave of itself, but as it was considered by the Scriptures and by right reason, that is, as founded on the natural order wanted by God. To this end, he taught Christians to respect it as such, even if the rulers were not yet fully aware of it. But, at the same time, he taught us to resist him when he went beyond his limits, violated the common good and wanted to arrogate the rights of God. Thus the Church presided over the construction site of Christian society, and thus also helped political power to rise to the heights of its mission.
It was a realistic method, but not a praxisist one. A method that allowed the Church, in a non-Christian society, to equally exercise its task of safeguarding the common good and thus to serve the civil authority, when the latter did not yet recognize any authority. A far-sighted method, attentive to the signs of the times but, even before that, to the order of things, which time cannot erase.
A method which, for Pope Leo, remained exemplary, even for his era. Today, he observes with pain in Au milieu des sollicitudes, many enemies of the Church are conspiring “to annihilate Christianity in France” and for the “return to paganism“. And he continued: the Church has always taught to respect political authority, because “there is no power except from God“, and “the nature of power“, whatever form it historically takes, remains “immutable“, as it “finds its raison d’être and its strength in providing for the common good”. For this reason it is also necessary to accept the current (republican) governments “as long as the needs of the common good require it“. However, there is also a duty of resistance, not to the “constituted power“, but to the “legislation” produced by the “men invested with power“, when they, “imbued with bad principles“, abuse it, violating the common good. Thus, “legislative interventions adverse to religion and God” can never be approved; and this in defense of the very dignity of citizens, because, if “the State refuses to give to God what is God’s, it is necessarily forced not to give citizens what they are entitled to as men“.
As can be seen, the “pastoral choices” of Leo XIII were not essentially different from those of his ancient predecessors at the time of the pagan empire. They were, in fact, informed by the same ideal of faith, metaphysically founded. For this reason it can be assumed that, despite the necessary differences, even today, in times much closer to his own, albeit more radicalised, Pope Leo would propose the same “line”.
It could be observed, however, that Leo XIII’s line, good for antiquity, does not seem to have “worked” with modernity. Probably, because ancient, pre-Christian paganism still had its own religiosity, while modern paganism is a post-Christian paganism, enraged with Christianity and with religiosity itself. The principle of the divine origin of authority is completely inconceivable for an atheist culture, or virtually one; and the social pastoral care of the Church must take this into account. It is true. But this does not prevent us from holding firm to the principle. And, as for Leo XIII, it must be said that his “pastoral choices” did not arise primarily from historical-cultural considerations, but from a fixed gaze on a Factor that surpassed them all. In this regard, we report these words of his, again from the encyclical Au milieu des sollicitudes: “We wanted to briefly recall the past, so that Catholics do not have any reason to be disconcerted about the present. The struggle is essentially always the same: Jesus Christ is perpetually made a sign of the contradictions of the world. The means employed by the current enemies of Christianity are always the same“, even if “slightly modified in form“. But the means of defense are equally identical, already clearly indicated” by the “Apologists, Doctors and Martyrs” of the Church. “What they have done, it is up to us to do too. Let us therefore put the glory of God and his Church first: we work for her with constant and sincere commitment and leave the task of determining the outcome to Jesus Christ, who announces that he has already “overcome the world“.
Marco Nardone
Marco Nardone
Collegio degli Autori
